Azure Migrate – Azure Migration Assistant

Azure Migrate is a new service which helps users to get better insights and guidance to assist in migrating to Azure. Until now the service has been in a limited preview that draw positive feedback and Microsoft recently made it broadly available and there is no need to request access anymore.

The prominent features of Azure Migrate include support for agent-based and agentless-discovery of VMware-virtualized Windows and Linux virtual machines. This feature is highly beneficial for users as it lets them to easily identify multi-tier applications whether it’s a single VM or a group of VMs. via dependency visualization. One can also make informed decisions and get quick access to the solutions of various questions i.e. readiness, cost, and rightsizing. The readiness determines whether or not the VM is suitable for running in Azure while right-sizing helps to get to know the utilization of memory, disk, and CPU.

Workload specific migration services offer quick assessment for users and include Azure Site Recovery and Azure Database Migration Service. The former is used for servers and it takes a minimum time to inform a server about the migration and there is no downtime for testing. The latter is for databases and it provides simple and guided solutions for moving on-premises databases to Azure. Upon migration in order to ensure the VMs stay secure and remain well-managed one may want to use other services like Azure Backup, Azure Security Center, etc.

Azure Migrate is offered at no extra charge and supports production deployments. Even though it is currently available in West Central US region, it should be noted that the availability of Azure Migrate in one particular region doesn’t affect your ability to plan migrations for other targeted regions.